Random Question Thread

[Spekkio]

crazy thought here: has anyone tried stacking vast sums of chr gear, alongside equip that enhances killer effects for tanking? i seem to remember talking with my LS and someone volunteered that a friend of theirs had tried it once and it was effective, but third hand information is very far from fact. it seems unlikely this could be turned effective, due to the unreliability of intimidate, but assuming it's a roll of your chr against the mob's (i'm conjecturing here, not stating as fact this is how it works) it might be worth playing with a bit. colibri have horrific chr (they landed maybe 1/25 songs they tried to reflect on me) so they might be a good target to play with for testing if anyone is utterly bored enough to try. regardless, i remain skeptical, though.

[Tajin]

I did it with BLM, SAM, NIN and RDM. i would believe RDM is optional if you have decked melees.

[aurik]

Surely theres a setup that can three-man Excavation Duty (PSC Lebros)? What is it, how is it done, time required etc etc. As much info as possible, please.

blm blm mnk used to work back before they ninja'd the assault. I think it still works but is much harder now.

[moguri]

Surely theres a setup that can three-man Excavation Duty (PSC Lebros)? What is it, how is it done, time required etc etc. As much info as possible, please.

blm blm mnk used to work back before they ninja'd the assault. I think it still works but is much harder now.

what'd they do to it?

[Ferien]

crazy thought here: has anyone tried stacking vast sums of chr gear, alongside equip that enhances killer effects for tanking? i seem to remember talking with my LS and someone volunteered that a friend of theirs had tried it once and it was effective, but third hand information is very far from fact. it seems unlikely this could be turned effective, due to the unreliability of intimidate, but assuming it's a roll of your chr against the mob's (i'm conjecturing here, not stating as fact this is how it works) it might be worth playing with a bit. colibri have horrific chr (they landed maybe 1/25 songs they tried to reflect on me) so they might be a good target to play with for testing if anyone is utterly bored enough to try. regardless, i remain skeptical, though.

Been done against HNMs, and it's not worth it (unreliable rate, couldn't get any statistically significant data, couldn't identify if an increase existed at all). Against xp mobs, I haven't heard of any tests, but I can't imagine it would be worth it even if it worked well.

[Spekkio]

crazy thought here: has anyone tried stacking vast sums of chr gear, alongside equip that enhances killer effects for tanking? i seem to remember talking with my LS and someone volunteered that a friend of theirs had tried it once and it was effective, but third hand information is very far from fact. it seems unlikely this could be turned effective, due to the unreliability of intimidate, but assuming it's a roll of your chr against the mob's (i'm conjecturing here, not stating as fact this is how it works) it might be worth playing with a bit. colibri have horrific chr (they landed maybe 1/25 songs they tried to reflect on me) so they might be a good target to play with for testing if anyone is utterly bored enough to try. regardless, i remain skeptical, though.

Been done against HNMs, and it's not worth it (unreliable rate, couldn't get any statistically significant data, couldn't identify if an increase existed at all). Against xp mobs, I haven't heard of any tests, but I can't imagine it would be worth it even if it worked well.

well, there's another one for the rubbish bin. thanks for confirming what i thought.

[Shuemue]

Does Subtle Blow effect ranged attacks?

[aurik]

Surely theres a setup that can three-man Excavation Duty (PSC Lebros)? What is it, how is it done, time required etc etc. As much info as possible, please.

blm blm mnk used to work back before they ninja'd the assault. I think it still works but is much harder now.

what'd they do to it?

increased wall hp, decreased physical damage reduction to decrease the effectiveness of DoT spells.

[Ryushii]

Ok, so I don't know very much about modifiers, and I am lvling RNG. I looked up the modifiers for the marksmanship and archery skills and saw that str only affects archery. Now I have been told by some of the RNG in my shell that STR is more important to increase than AGI for Archery because it not only is a modifier, but it also factors into the damage equation and whatever else they said that I didn't completely understand but sort of did. Anyway, I see that Marksmanship WSes have a 30% AGi modifier, and no STR modifier. Does that mean a RNG would want to stack AGI over STR for Marksmanship, or do the modifiers for Marksmanship not matter as much as increase damage directly using STR? Also, where does Ranged Attack factor into the equation (if anywhere)?

[Falaras]

Modifiers suck, stack STR it gives Side or Slug a huge damage boost compared to AGI.

[Amele]

shit is situational. the fstr2 calculation is approximately the same as 50% str (for the purposes of selecting gear, don't try to calculate damage that way)

so if you can get 5 agi over 3 str, that will improve your (D+FSTR2+WSC) about the same amount

1/2 AGI is also racc, 1/2 str is ratt. if damage is your only concern, STR is (almost always) better. but it *is* situational.

if you want a more in depth look at it, I can walk you through how to calculate expected damage in detail, I can; it's not terribly difficult math (about basic algebra) but it can be complex.

[Deftscythe]

effects of reverse racism. I'm in a JP shell and I use the terms all the time. None of them throw a pissfit. lol

First, there's no such thing as reverse racism unless you mean something like thinking all mexicans are super awesome just because they're mexican.

Second, the reason people get pissed off is because no one likes people acting like something they're not.

[Ryushii]

shit is situational. the fstr2 calculation is approximately the same as 50% str (for the purposes of selecting gear, don't try to calculate damage that way)

so if you can get 5 agi over 3 str, that will improve your (D+FSTR2+WSC) about the same amount

1/2 AGI is also racc, 1/2 str is ratt. if damage is your only concern, STR is (almost always) better. but it *is* situational.

if you want a more in depth look at it, I can walk you through how to calculate expected damage in detail, I can; it's not terribly difficult math (about basic algebra) but it can be complex.

Does the 5agi=3str rule apply to both xbow and bow?

[VZX]

shit is situational. the fstr2 calculation is approximately the same as 50% str (for the purposes of selecting gear, don't try to calculate damage that way)

so if you can get 5 agi over 3 str, that will improve your (D+FSTR2+WSC) about the same amount

1/2 AGI is also racc, 1/2 str is ratt. if damage is your only concern, STR is (almost always) better. but it *is* situational.

if you want a more in depth look at it, I can walk you through how to calculate expected damage in detail, I can; it's not terribly difficult math (about basic algebra) but it can be complex.

Does the 5agi=3str rule apply to both xbow and bow?

There was no rule.
5 AGI 3 STR was just an example.

To get better use of damage formula, you need
- basic knowledge math
- basic knowledge calculus

[deivi]

nub BRD question:

what determines wich songs will overwrite? was skilling string lfg (lv21) and noticed the 2 songs I had on werent always the last 2 I sang.

[rithridan]

The song with the longest remaining duration wins. For instance I assume you sing March with a +2 instrument and Ballad

If you sing Victory March -> Mage Ballad -> Mage Ballad 2, the songs you will have on you will be Victory March and Mage Ballad 2 because March was sung with a +2 instrument giving it the base duration +20% which is 2 minutes and 24 seconds while Ballad was sung without any enhancment giving it the base duration of 2 minutes.

[Rocl]

Do you have to kill all 3 NMs for NIN AF3? I just tried killing only the BRD but >_> nothing happened

[Lynsy]

Do you have to kill all 3 NMs for NIN AF3? I just tried killing only the BRD but >_> nothing happened

If you can get the others to despawn when one is killed, yes...but sometimes they don't want to do that. It's honestly easier to just kill all 3.

[Ferien]

Do you have to kill all 3 NMs for NIN AF3? I just tried killing only the BRD but >_> nothing happened

If you can get the others to despawn when one is killed, yes...but sometimes they don't want to do that. It's honestly easier to just kill all 3.

We learned that the hard way, didn't we~

[Amele]

shit is situational. the fstr2 calculation is approximately the same as 50% str (for the purposes of selecting gear, don't try to calculate damage that way)

so if you can get 5 agi over 3 str, that will improve your (D+FSTR2+WSC) about the same amount

1/2 AGI is also racc, 1/2 str is ratt. if damage is your only concern, STR is (almost always) better. but it *is* situational.

if you want a more in depth look at it, I can walk you through how to calculate expected damage in detail, I can; it's not terribly difficult math (about basic algebra) but it can be complex.

Does the 5agi=3str rule apply to both xbow and bow?

There was no rule.
5 AGI 3 STR was just an example.

To get better use of damage formula, you need
- basic knowledge math
- basic knowledge calculus

you'd need more agi for the bow because str applies twice. (which is effectively what VZX said)

I don't think it takes calculus though, at least, I've never needed any calculus for them; optimization plots from statistics and probability type courses would probably cover it too (or even just equation comparisons which is basic knowledge algebra) unless there's something I missed? (I would be interested in learning more about the pdif distribution, since I haven't been able to find anything concrete on it beyond: "in certain ranges, the mode is 1.0; mostly")

(I suppose basic calculus gives you knowledge about calculating damage function rates of change for given stats, but for it to be useful with most gear (since just about everything "good" these days has multiple stats) you'd really need advanced calculus since you'd want to be doing slopes along multiple axes simultaneously.)